My girlfriend found out that her husband of 10 years, who has been traveling for work, every week, has been cheating on her for the last few years. The details not important but she's divorcing him. The situation forces me to reexamine my interaction with B, and it made me realized a lot of things that I did not know before. I'm at a brink of discovering myself and I'm sort of excited about it.
It's not about my sexual abuse it's about my father who was traveling a lot, cheating, being verbal, emotional and physical abusive, and eventually he left me and my mother. At age 11, I suffered a heart break and was sent to an unattended military hospital. I laid in bed crying and wishing that there was something I could do to get my father back. I idolized him and did everything he told me to do and more, and then he beat the crap out of me and my mother and said horrible things to me, and my mother, and he cheated constantly, ever since I had memories, he was out cheating and fooling around. Eventually he moved away to another city, and he took his mistress / secretary with him and we did not know if he'd ever back again. When my mother confronted him before he left us for the one last time, he also beat the crap out of her. I was heart broken and my heart stopped working, in that I developed irregular heart beat (yes a real heart break) and they had to send me to a hospital. Abandoned and unattended, the military hospital housed soldiers from the boarder dispute war between China and Vietnam, the kids were about 18 years old, farm boys, and they were in rehab and they took care of me, I cried and I cried and wished that I could do anything, something to bring my father back. I kept on asking me, have I done anything wrong? Was I not enough? Did he ever love me? If he ever loved me how could he leave me? I would do anything to get him back, I would endure his beating, his verbal abuse, his moodiness, his lack of relationship with my mother, just to have him back in my life.
He never did come back. For year and half my mother worked tirelessly until she got herself a job in the far away city, and she and I moved to the city where my dad had shacked up with his mistress and eventually got the company to fire the mistress and moved us back in together. By then she was a changed woman, she started going out and she started to date others, and meanwhile my father developed a taste for another woman whom he shacked up with, then another, then another. My mother's heart was so broken that she attempted suicide. To avoid any further drama, I left home when I was 13 and went into a boarding school. Miraculously the only thing that I ever was good at was academic life and it was that life that sent me to the States when I was fifteen. Alone once again, I had to live a life all by myself and raise myself, and when I was 16 I was told that I would be in jail if I returned, it was the year of Tiananmen Square incident, and I was blacklisted.
My father was deceptive, a liar, and a womanizer. I wanted to form a different relationship with B so that eventually I could will a different outcome. He's hot and cold and he rewarded me when I listened to him and he disappeared when he wanted to. I kept on thinking one day he'll change his mind and love me and we'd live a happy life together. I could take care of him, impress him, and be together with him.
Maybe he'll be willing to leave his family like my father did and be with me, maybe he'll see how much I loved him and he'd be with me and not abandon me like my father did.
I was not trying to change him even though I might have appeared to do that. I was trying to will a different outcome to save that little heart broken girl.
I never did save her. More shit happened and then she came to the States and had to be forced to face different set of difficult circumstance. I never did save her and I was trying to figure out why I was having such a hard time letting B go. I am still trying to save her, through my relationship with B who was in so many ways, just like my father.
What my girlfriend's reaction taught me was that if I was a normal person, I should have been upset, but I was not. I thought the only way that men could behave is by cheating and by being with other women all the time, emotionally distant and unavailable, and paid only a little attention to me. That's why whenever B paid any compliment, paid any attention to me, I was so elated. I was happy that he still remembered me, and he must still miss me and he wanted me to be in his life. I told myself. I was only just one of a dozen yet I convinced myself that I was special to him, I meant something to him, because he often told me that when we were together, I thought when he said that he loved me, he meant it. But he did not, his action spoke louder than words. On the week when he had his birthday, when I asked to see if I could come to visit him, and when he said no and I sent a big bouquet of edible fruit and chocolate to him, he later told me that he was fucking a woman he hired to work for him, he fucked her multiple times that week and then when she was out here, he fucked her some more. I thought to myself, of course he's allowed, he's allowed to do anything he wants, because as long as he loved me, it was okay, but how could he really love me when he only just wanted to fuck other women? How could I be so naive and was convinced that he still loved me when he really did not care about me, he fucked other women for god's sake on a week where he told me that he was too busy to see me? He stayed on Saturday that weekend so he could fuck her more. He told me that he had to stay in Philly longer to be with his friends. No he had to stay longer so that he could fuck a new woman. These are the things that my mother did just to keep my father, and here I was, doing exactly the same to myself.
What my girlfriend did to her soon to be ex-husband was every self respecting, strong, courageous woman would do, she put an end to it because she knew that he was not worthy of her love. it brought everything to light. I tolerated B like I tolerated my father. I behaved as if I was my mother and I idolized B because I was convinced he was the only way for me to feel alive, the pain, the agony, the sorrow, it was all that I could ever deserve, because as a little girl, lying in the hospital bed, waiting for her father's return, was a girl who's heart was broken, and she never healed. She was hoping one day she could be worthy of his love, only that she should never wished for that, she was better than that, she was a loving, kind, generous woman who was loved by many, and she deserve so much more. Yet, for years and years, she thought she needed his love, his love was the only way to save her, to save that little girl, to revert time, to change a past, and to create a future that she knew that she wanted, to be his and his only and to love him and be loved back. "As long as he loved me. I told myself. as long as he wanted me and desired me. I can endure. I can love him the way I know how. To be selfless, to be forgiving, to be faithful. To love him is the only way that I could save that little girl."
My father never came back for us. I never could save that little girl. B never knew that he hurt me so much so, he could not change and will not change. He did not care if I was around or not. There would always be others like me, who needed him to figure out their own issues. He was deceiving, manipulative, careless, and unloving like my father was.
There is no amount of love and devotion could change B's mind. He would never be mine. He would never hold me and tell me that everything was going to be all right. He was never the man who could save the little girl. That little girl is dead. She's gone. She'll never be saved. Her father left her and that was the end.
But I, I'm not the little girl. I'm a grown woman. I can and will take care of myself, and I must, I must say goodbye to the little girl who was abandoned by her parents, after suffering through rape and molestation at an even younger age, at age 11, her heart broke for good, and she never came back to life. I must let her go. I can't save her. B can't save her. She's dead and I must let her go.
I am close to discovering myself. And one day I will be ready to say goodbye to this version of me. I will be ready to leave everything behind. I will be able erase B out of life, like he never existed. I deserve more. I need more. The bond is broken. I'm at a brink of discovering myself and when I complete that journey, I'll be ready to let go of everything.
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